Into the wild

Trip Start Sep 24, 2008

Trip End Sep 23, 2009

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In the forest

Flag of United States Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska
Wednesday, June 10, 2009

After spending too much money on food in Anchorage it was beginning to look like we may need to buy ourselves elasticated waisted jeans, so we decided it was time to leave and explore the wilderness. We headed south to the Kenai Peninsular where we hired a Canadian canoe and took off with two heavy bags of supplies across the Swan river lakes trail. A 4day wilderness canoe through 8 lakes to the Moose river where we would paddle back to civilization. As soon as we were dropped off at the start and our lift had disappeared from sight we knew we were all alone as all we could hear was the mosquitoes buzzing around our heads. We had thought that the lakes were all joined by small rivers for us to paddle down but we were wrong. It turned out we were going to have to carry the canoe and our gear from lake to lake. The distances were from 10meters to up to a mile(we were regretting bringing the box of beer). We knew we had plenty of time and slowly but surely after multiply trips we would get all our stuff to the lake and then we were able to enjoy our paddle in the wilderness.

Our first attempt to cross the lake took awhile as it was as if we had been caught in a whirl pool and kept gong round in circles. It took a while but we soon managed to get into a rhythm and our circles became zigzags. At least we were now traveling in the general direction we were suppose to. Carrying all our stuff and the canoe between lakes through mosquito infested forests where we were likely to run into bears was really hard work and we were wondering if we had bitten off more than we could chew. With time we soon picked up momentum and began to enjoy the peacefulness and solitude of the landscape. By tea time at the end of the first day we were exhausted but had enjoyed our first day in the wilds while we tucked into our pasta and a beer around our camp fire. We sang campfire songs long into the night. Well Matt did anyway. During the next few days we continued the routine of humping all our stuff between lakes and paddling(by now in a straight line) across the stunning lakes. We saw Bald Eagles and Moose as well as lots of water foul and of course mosquitoes. All too quickly we found ourselves back in civilization.

Inspired we decided we were going to walk the Russia river trail for few days where we would hopefully see spawning Salmon and Matt could fish. We were also told that we were likely to run into bears there. We visited the water falls where we saw the Salmon but there were no bears. We continued on along the trail into the hills to our first camp. At the camp was a lone man from the Check Republic who had been on the trail for 5 days looking at and filming bears. He delighted in showing us his films. We saw lots of signs of bears but the whole time we were there we saw none. Matt didn't catch any fish either. We had had a great time enjoying the wilderness and the scenery but the weather was changing and we decided to head back and move on to Seaward.

In Seaward we went on a boat to look at glaciers and wildlife. We saw lots of birds, sea lions and sea otters and many hump back wales as well as the glaciers. We had a gloriously sunny day and both really enjoyed ourselves. The following day we went dog mushing on a wheeled cart as there was no snow. We got to fuss some puppies and Helen got caught trying to smuggle one of them into her coat. We then moved onto Exit glacier where a park warden took us on a short tour. He explained we were likely to see black bears as there was lots of them about. We followed the tour through the trails up to the face of the glacier and back but saw no bears. We believed that was our last chance to see bears here as we had to head back to Anchorage the next day.

As it happens on the highway back to Anchorage we saw 2 Grizzly bears on the mud flats looking for shell fish. We stopped and watched them for some time. We finally saw our bears and from a distance much to Helens relief.